Interview

This is all that I could muster after a night that confirmed everything that I’ve been doing about this whole idol business. In front of gods and man and maniacs, NECRONOMIDOL had not only taken the stage and wreaked absolute havoc, but had cut a very different jib in meeting with me, in person, and providing some great insights.

As soon as Terry mentioned it, I had a feeling that this direct connection with Ricky Wilson himself was going to be a good time. Ever wondered about the relationship between this bugfuck of a film, RHYMEBERRY and “DAWNSLAYER”? Read on!

With the recent release of NECRONOMIDOL’s new single “DAWNSLAYER” we decided it would be a good time to have a chat with Richard (Ricky) Wilson, the man behind the group. He was very gracious in providing us with some of his time and answering a wide variety of questions about both himself and NECRONOMIDOL.

I alluded to this one yesterday, team, and I’m still buzzing a little bit from getting a chance to have a real-deal conversation with the man behind Guso Drop, 2&, Hoshina Fumimi, Himegoto Zettaichi, ancillarily Screaming Sixties, formerly Poroporo Baroque, and so on. Folks have been dying to know the score ever since it was announced a few weeks ago that Guso Drop was going to disband, and, while Daichi has been pouring his heart out on Twitter, there have been oh so many questions.

Krv is the real hero here — because he’s friends with Daichi in addition to being a fan, he offered to hook up an interview, and then provided real-time translation over LINE, and at an ungodly hour for his timezone to boot. I have the patrons to thank, too, for providing a really good starting place in terms of questions and topics. I ultimately cut this about in half by combining thoughts and letting Daichi do some of the driving, but I hope that we were able to get to the gist of what you were curious about.

I was just hoping that I wasn’t going to offend anybody.

So! Have you ever wanted to get into the head of an idol manager? What about an idol manager who’s in the midst of ending his flagship project? Or an idol manager who’s always looked at himself as a musician first? Or even just a guy who’d say:

If he throws a dinner party with human flesh on the menu, I’d probably go along!

I’m clearly not the only person in the West who likes idols and also likes to write about idols and who also wishes more people would get into Wonder Lander — Passion Idol, from the francophonie, is right there with me. Yeah, it’s in French, but that’s way easier to read via machine translation than Japanese. Also, give Gru! a follow!

Hey gang! Brian over at Supreme Nothing may have an even deeper love for the enigmatic Dots than I do, and we got to chatting about this last week; the below is the result of his investigation into how this beautiful madness comes about. Remember to check out Brian’s other stuff, including playing ringleader for some of our more ambitious games, over on his site!

Shoegaze was the term coined for a sub-genre of postmodern bands, initially from the UK region, who played gorgeous, multi-layered rock with distorted guitars, obscured vocals and a dreamy quality that swept you up in emotions. The bands tended to let the music do the talking, so they often maintained a detached demeanor, rarely making eye contact with the audience. In other words, they gazed at their shoes as they played.

In the 90’s, bands like My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Ride and Slowdive enjoyed a rocketing burst of success worldwide. Some of the bands broke up, and others like MBV just sort of retreated away and were assumed by many to be done. In the last few years, all of these bands have been warmly welcomed back, some with new material and sold-out shows. Shoegaze is back once again in the West.

Meanwhile in Japan, it never really ended. This whole time there’s been a multitude of beloved shoegaze, dream pop and post-rock bands keeping that melancholy and dreamy torch lit. In fact, Japan has one of the best shoegaze scenes worldwide. Running parallel to this is an exploding scene of new independent pop idol groups who actively seek out experimentation with other styles in their quest to attract a piece of the wota pie. And that’s what brings us to our elusive subject at hand … Continue reading →

I’m sure by now you’ve all read Krv’s take on last week’s NECRONOMIDOL one-man in London, if not check it out here, because he put this experience into words far better than I ever could! But let’s just say; it was only a few months ago that I said that I’ll probably never attend an idol show for personal reasons (aka Japan is expensive), if you told March!Kerrie that in 4 months time she’d be having a quick chat with Necroma inside a tiny kitchen she’d say “did I get drunk and post bad self-insert fanfiction again?” But now I’ve had a few days to reflect on what the heck just happened, I can certainly say it’s real. I have audio files and photos to prove it. Continue reading →

I alluded to this in yesterday’s 100 Days of Tsurezure post; ol’ Maniac here ultimately had to cancel his plans to see Not Secured, Loosed Ends in Toronto, but Papermaiden had previously volunteered to provide translation help, and she did a great job with this. And it’s the first interview we’ve done! Pretty cool.

A few notes to get started: This interview has been edited for clarity. Most of the words are the members, transcribed from their sentences written live using PC translation. Most of the answers were kind of brainstormed by the members as a group, piecing up sentences. Unless otherwise specified, you can assume the answer is the group’s and not a particular member. Shidare, as the great leader she is, often guided the discussion and prompted members to see if they would like to add anything. Imamura-san, the founder of Codomomental, was also present and sometimes helped the girls answer questions about the essence and concept. Much of the interview was conducted textually. Imamurasan suggested to use Google Translate to facilitate the interview in case the Japanese-English language barrier got too dense*. For now, enjoy what might be the first official idol interview conducted in person through Google Translate. Continue reading →